The Valentino Affair (13 page)

As Blanca sailed out of New York harbor, watching the skyline slip beneath the horizon, her overriding emotion was “a wonderful feeling of relief.”
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Perhaps now she could get on with her life. After all, she was still only twenty-one years old; she had her son by her side, and she had Anna Mooney to help her.

A few weeks later Blanca arrived in Chile to a joyful family welcome. It was the first time that Señora Errázuriz-Vergara had seen her three-year-old grandson, and she couldn’t have been more ecstatic. As much as possible Blanca kept details of her domestic life under wraps, downplaying her troubles with Jack, working hard to close the marriage-related rift that had opened between her and the señora. After a frosty start, mother and daughter reconciled. At this point, Blanca had no reason to think that she would ever return permanently to the United States; she was back in the family fold, once again enjoying the untroubled luxury of her youth. Nor did she have any qualms about raising Jack Jr. in Chile. When it came time for the boy to be educated, he would learn from the very best private tutors, and then, if family tradition was any guideline, it would be off to Europe and one of the top universities, either Oxford or perhaps the Sorbonne. With her life back on track, Blanca relaxed. She also demonstrated that the daredevil streak that had prompted the airplane ride in England was still intact.

It resurfaced one day in December when a friend named Felipe Cortez arrived at Palacio Vergara by car and Blanca pestered him to take her for a drive. He tried to dissuade her. The bodywork on the Ford was hanging off, he protested, and besides there weren’t even any seats for the passengers. Blanca pooh-poohed his concerns and perched herself on the running board. Cortez roared off. They had hardly gone any distance when someone darted in front of them. Cortez yanked the steering wheel, sending the car into a skid and throwing Blanca from the car. She was fortunate. All she sustained was a small cut on her chin that required three stitches, and “she never even whimpered,”
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recalled Anna Mooney, who described her mistress as “very plucky.”
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That same night Blanca attended a concert and joked about the small bandage that covered her wound.

Her calendar was full. Later that season, in January 1916, she and Jack Jr. spent time at the fashionable summer resort of Osorno, some 620 miles south of Valparaíso. Next on the agenda was a planned trip to China. And it was while Blanca was back in Viña del Mar, finalizing arrangements for this Orient adventure, that she received a surprise letter from her husband. He had undergone a change of heart, filled with remorse over how heartlessly he had treated Blanca. He begged her to return to New York “for the boy’s sake.”
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After much soul-searching, Blanca agreed.

On April 13, 1916, Blanca’s six-thousand-mile voyage—the opening of the Panama Canal in August 1914 had sliced three uncomfortable weeks off the sea passage—ended when the
Almirante
docked in New York. Jack was waiting on the quayside for her—blind drunk. In that instant she knew nothing had changed.

From there, the heartaches just kept multiplying. Jack installed Blanca and Jack Jr. in a rented apartment on East 60th Street then went to stay at his brother’s place, three blocks away. Even when Blanca pointed out that Charles de Saulles wasn’t actually living there, Jack still refused to allow her to move in with him. Blanca bit her tongue and applied herself to the task of salvaging her marriage. Her efforts seemed to rub off on Jack. The next few days saw a distinct improvement in his demeanor and his drinking, leading Blanca to wonder if she had judged him too harshly.

One Sunday Jack arrived at Blanca’s apartment and asked if he could take Jack Jr. for the day. Blanca agreed, and father and son departed. A short while later a messenger arrived bearing a huge bouquet of flowers with a note: “To our one and only sweetheart, from Big and Little Jack.”
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Blanca melted with delight at this token of Jack’s renewed love for her. Later that day, when Jack Jr. returned, he was bubbling with excitement at the day’s events. He burbled that they had visited the Central Park Zoo, where he had seen the lions and made them roar. The youngster continued in this vein for some time until blurting out how he and “Miss Jo” had laughed at the lions.

Blanca’s antennae began to twitch. “Who is Miss Jo?”

“Oh, Miss Jo is a lady who was with us. Daddy called her Jo and told me to call her Miss Jo and not to tell you anything about her.”
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It was a dagger to the heart. When Blanca confronted her husband, he admitted that “Miss Jo” was a nationally known cabaret dancer named Joan Sawyer.

The sultry Joan Sawyer and one of her dance partners

Joan Sawyer always was coy about her antecedents. Some claim that her real name was Bessie Morrison Sawyer and she was born in El Paso in 1887. Others put her birthplace as Cincinnati some seven years earlier and said she took her stage name from an ex-husband, Alvah Sawyer, whom she had married in 1902. Whatever the truth about Joan’s background, by 1914 she had become one of the top “exhibition dancers” in New York City, cashing in on the dance craze sweeping the nation. She specialized in bringing a ladylike decorum to styles of dance that might otherwise have been considered racy.

Audiences swooned over her dreamy dark looks and the exotic outfits she wore in musicals staged at the Persian Garden, a nightclub atop the Winter Gardens on Broadway. Joan didn’t just star in the revues, she also managed the Persian Garden—becoming one of the first women to run a New York nightclub—and in a move that outraged many patrons, she insisted on employing black musicians in her orchestra. Nonconformity was hardwired into her genes. She was also an ardent suffragist who used her high profile to advance the cause of women both at the ballot box and in the workplace. Besides starring regularly at her own club, Joan also tripped her talents just a few blocks farther along Broadway at another nightspot called the Jardin de Danse. Among the many dancers she bumped into at this venue was a much heralded newcomer named Rodolfo Guglielmi.

He was still playing second fiddle to Bonnie Glass, but Joan—no mean judge of dance flesh—saw instantly that Rodolfo’s languid elegance was stealing the show and carrying the act. So when Bonnie suddenly announced her retirement to marry artist Ben Ali Haggin, Joan didn’t hesitate. She jumped right in and grabbed Rodolfo before anyone else could get their hands on him.

At this time the Argentinean tango was all the rage, and the elegant Miss Sawyer—a far superior dancer to Bonnie Glass—reasoned that a sensual Latin partner was all she needed to catapult her to the pinnacle of Broadway dance acts. And so it proved. Rodolfo’s fiery exoticism offered a perfect counterpoint to Joan’s demure gentility, and the couple became an immediate hit. Excited nightclubbers reckoned they might even rival Vernon and Irene Castle, the current king and queen of exhibition dancing, who were raking in thousands of dollars from shows and lessons. Unlike the Castles, though, the partnership between Joan and Rodolfo was purely professional. Joan’s romantic interests lay outside of work—as Blanca de Saulles was finding out.

Jack protested that he and the alluring Miss Sawyer were acquaintances, nothing more. To prove his fidelity, one night after a dinner party he’d thrown for the Heckschers, he begged Blanca to spend the night with him at the West 57th Street apartment. She agreed on one condition: Jack had to swear that he had never “entertained” another woman at this apartment. Jack put his hand on his heart and summoned all the deities. Blanca believed him and headed for the bedroom. That same night, at about midnight, the telephone rang. Jack hurried to the phone and attempted to keep the conversation muted, but even from some distance away Blanca could hear a woman’s voice. She also heard her husband say, “No, I can’t tonight—not tonight.”
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Blanca stewed in anger. When Jack put the phone down, she again challenged him, demanding to know the true nature of his relationship with Joan Sawyer. His response was brutal. “Do you think you are the only woman who has ever been in love with me?”
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Blanca felt as if she had been punched in the face. And the final ignominy was not long in coming. One night, as she and Jack entered the Arrowhead Inn, a chic tavern in Washington Heights, a drunk female customer yelled out, “Who is that with Jack de Saulles?”
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causing gales of laughter around the tables. Blanca realized that she had become the laughingstock of Manhattan. Something had to give.

If Jack knew of his wife’s distress, it didn’t show. He was too busy adding to his already extensive real estate portfolio. In May 1916 he acquired yet another home, this time in the “millionaire colony”
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of Westbury on Long Island. This was where the fabulously rich—the Morgans, the Belmonts, and the Whitneys—built their summer homes, vast porticoed mansions that stared down imperiously from inclines built to catch the breeze and offer fabulous views. Jack’s house was more modest. Called The Box because of its square shape, it stood on eight heavily wooded acres and formed part of the sprawling Ladenburg estate. It also lay handily close to the Meadow Brook Country Club, home to the famous hounds and the oldest polo club in America, thus allowing Jack to indulge two of his great passions.

Blanca rarely visited. She preferred the hurly-burly of city life, where she could gossip with friends and, more important, where she could keep her ear close to the ground. It paid off. Close friend John Milholland—brother of Inez Boissevain, poster girl of the suffragist movement—took Blanca aside and whispered that Jack indeed had been sleeping with Joan Sawyer at the apartment all through the preceding winter. It was common knowledge, he said. Blanca’s expression hardened. She had the confirmation she had always dreaded but long suspected. Jack’s egregious lie formed the final act of betrayal. It was divorce now, and damn the consequences.